Homeownership.

So homeownership is a bitch. (Hey, why craft up some fancy introduction when that’s what I really want to say?) You’d think moving into your own place that you actually own would be the cat’s pajamas but let me tell you: it is SO NOT.

In the beginning, sure, we were punch drunk on homeownership. I remember looking around the bathroom one day thinking, I own these baseboards. I own this vanity. I own this little metal thing that holds up my toilet paper.

I own this toilet.

But then the shit started to hit the fan. For starters, it’s easy to forget that when you own a house, you’re responsible for it. There’s no calling up the landlord to tell them there’s a giant piece of siding hanging from the side of your house that bangs up against it everytime the wind blows and makes your heart race in the middle of the night because you’re SURE there’s a robber and Babe! BABE! Wake up! Do you hear those footsteps?

Nope, can’t do that.

Or how about if your house has this inexplicable tendency to let out what could only politely be called a loud belch every couple of hours but actually sounds more like a foghorn that you thought only you could hear inside your house but which is actually blasting straight in the direction of your next door neighbor’s house who happens to have a newborn baby but who also happens to be too kind to say anything about it? About your belching house? How about that, landlord?

Landlord?

Oh right. Heh. That’s me.

$%^$#%#&^!

This whole issue was only brought home (no pun intended) last week when our basement conveniently flooded with two inches of water when Andreas was conveniently out of town. It wasn’t until I was vacuuming up murky basement water with our neighbor’s shop vac (yes that same neighbor with the baby who is too polite to tell us that our house has taken to yelling at their house every so often) and sloshing that murky water over to a makeshift piping operation near the basement door that it hit me. Literally. In the face. The pipe leading outside burst out of the pump sending aforementioned disgusting basement water all over me and it was then that I realized that homeownership is a bitch.

And then, we’re doing our taxes at H&R Block (you know what’s not a bitch? The first-time homebuyer tax credit, athankyouverymuch Mr. President.) when we realize that we paid for our quarterly taxes to the city of Beverly when we actually didn’t have to, because our mortgage company was apparently covering that for us. Hi. Who was supposed to inform us of this? We’re just lowly first-time homeowners. We don’t know these things! Isn’t someone supposed to tell us these things? So now we’ve got to call the city of Beverly to try to get our money back. Groan.

And speaking of you, city of Beverly, thanks a whole bunch for not taking our recycling this week. I won’t even complain about the fact that you only pick up recycling every other week which, to me, seems pretty ridiculous because we generate more of that stuff than we do regular trash and we would generate more but we don’t have a place to store all of it because you only pick up every other week. (Okay so I did complain.) I’m sorry it wasn’t sorted for you. We didn’t even know you needed it sorted.

Not to get up on a high horse, but in Brookline, we didn’t have to sort anything. There, it was just like, “all recycling is good recycling so give us what you got.” And also, in Brookline, they pick up recycling every week. Just saying.

Sigh. I kind of miss renting. And Brookline. I know, I know. The house is a good investment, blah blah blah. You know what I think sometimes? I’m too young for this $%^&.

We haven’t quite bonded with Beverly yet either.  So far it just seems like it’s: 1. Far from Boston. 2. Lacking great restaurants and shopping. And 3. Being very difficult on the matter of recycling. I’m giving it until the summer though to really decide where I stand. Because like I said, Beverly is a shore town, a beach town. So you can’t really judge it in the winter, I say. And those few days last week when the weather was wonderful, I gave one of its oceanfront parks a chance. And then I went back three times in one week because it was just. so. beautiful. So there’s hope for you yet, Beverly.

But as for homeownership, well, we’re kind of stuck with it anyways. That was the other thing we learned at H&R Block. If we sell or even rent this place before we’ve lived here for three years? Adios tax credit. So, yeah. We’re stuck. Which leads me back to my original point: homeownership? Is a bitch.